RFS vs. NFS

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <275 at ksr.UUCP> fdr at ksr.UUCP (Franklin Reynolds) writes:
>NFS seems obsolete to me. It was ok (though just barely) when 
>it was introduced but it hasn't kept up with technology.

I agree with your comments, but to be fair it should be noted
that one of the explicit design goals of NFS was to work not
only with UNIX filesystems but also with MS-DOS filesystems.
(Apparently somebody thought there was money to be extracted
from the IBM PC fad.)  I don't know if NFS was actually much
used with MS-DOS.  I do know that being first and making it
easy to license the technology was instrumental in Sun's NFS
success.  I wonder if anyone in AT&T who controls product
planning learned a lesson from that?  There have been
numerous nifty AT&T products, technically superior to
competitive products, that have pretty much failed in the
marketplace due to taking too long to become available and
then not being marketed well.  I won't recount the list here;
you probably know of some of these products.  (AT&T isn't
alone here, but I pick on them because of my frustration at
not being able to build applications on software technology
that I know could have been available if only...)